Monday, May 30, 2016

I think that I have
posted pics of this min previously but it is one of my absolute favorites. It
is a Chaos warrior from the now defunct Marauder Miniatures line. To my knowledge only available in the US as
part of a sample pack that included a Chaos dwarf with two hammers, MMS3 was
the package code if I'm not mistaken.

He
has come up on eBay every once in a while and I have always regretted not
picking up another one. As you can see from the above pictures I'm up to four now with the latest acquisition below!

And for those of you who are disheartened about eBay you can still find
the good deal occasionally, this guy was only $10 including shipping! A
reasonable price in my opinion so I picked it up and now I have some motivation
to get back into painting. Here he is
bare and mounted up on the new painting holders. As you can tell from the above paint schemes I'm a fan of Khorne. I think I will stick with some basic colors
of red, black, bone, and bronze as a tribute to his his previous paint-outs while trying some new techniques. I'm interested to see the results and compare them to his predecessors.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Yes pun fully
intended! My Car Wars/Dark future
project has become somewhat stalled as of late.
Got the cars weaponized and to the primer stage and then I realized that
I most of my paints are dried up. So
over the Holiday's I thought that I had this project jump started with the help
of my wonderful wife. She bought me a
slew of brushes for Christmas. Reality
of time management was that I was very slow in purchasing some cheap craft
paints. I have paints, brushes, and a
new paint station so no excuses I'm off to play Earl Scheib!

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Not what you think
although I did find some inappropriate pics to go along with the title.I instead have elected to stay on the true
topic which is stripping off old paint.As I posted previously I've decided to get back into the Rogue Trader
mins by diving into the old Space Elves/Eldar range.It was very easy to pick up a ton of the old
dreadnaught/war walker/wraithlords most of them had very poor paint jobs so the
task at hand was figuring out how to strip off the old paint.After some quick research I found a few
options.First up was the purple power juice or Castrol Super Clean.

Turns out that I couldn't find the Castrol Super Clean. Not sure if it isn't produced anymore of just not carried in my area.Next up was Dettol.

Well strike number
two it appears that this is really a British product either only available in
England or again not in my area.Next up was Simple Green.

Well it appears that
the 3rd time is a charm.I have to be
honest I had my doubts about this since it is a biodegradable degreaser but It
was my only option outside of a solvent based stripper.Much to my amazement it worked very
efficiently!I went with a 50/50mix and
in most cases it stripped off the paint in one soak.I decided to set up two soaking vats one for
the first heavy duty stripping and a second one for a separate soaking to get
into the nooks and crannies.

Above is the conglomeration of dreadnought bits I've recently purchased with the painting pealing off. to the right is what i thought was a spray can enamel but it peeled right off after a few days in the Simple Green.

Sunday, May 22, 2016

A few days ago Kaleb
Hordes posted an issue of Black Sun from GW Mail Order of the 80's, I
unfortunately could never really afford to order from the UK.As a wee lad I never had the money and once I
reached young adulthood and was able to they had opened the US Headquarters so
I never had to worry about it.I have to
be honest I really miss those old "bitz" days when you could order
anything out of the catalogues.I think
I actually spent more on bitz then I did full mins!Well Kaleb mentioned the old Troll insert
that US WD subscribers received for a while so I thought I would post the first
one! Here you go.

Friday, May 20, 2016

Well another great
day at the used book store! First up
Brian Craig's Plague Demon. This is the
second book in the Orfeo Trilogy so my set is complete and I can finally catch
up with Orlygg and possibly prompt a book club/review on the 3rd book Storm
Warriors! Also found a copy of the Felix and Gotrex
Shamanslayer which should complete my collection. I might have to binge read these over a holiday or vacation.

I also had a big day in the
Horus Heresy range picking up the latest 6 books in the series. A couple of them were in the large format
paperback but I'll replace them somewhere down the line. Lastly Graham McNeill's
Gods of Mars in hardback at less than half the price of the paperback, ahh what
a day!

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Another epiphany
struck me as I scrolled through G+ looking over posts and pictures of various
miniatures I noticed one post that really caught my eye. I cannot event remember what the min was but
as I was looking it over for more detail and inspiration and I noticed what the
artist had it mounted on to use as a handle.
I was dumbfounded by the genius of it.
Now I have to be honest I've always been a "just hold it by the
base" painter in the past but I've started to warm to the idea of mounting
a miniature on handle of some type. I've
seen lots of people using cork but I have yet to find a wine bottle cork that
was large enough to be stable when you mount a miniature on the top. I thought about wood dowels but just hadn't
gotten far enough to buy anything yet. And
then I saw this post and they were using an old pill bottle as the handle. What a great idea! I have access to these which would normally
be a discarded item in my house and has now become a reusable product. Again the best part is that they are
free! I guess I can claim that I'm a
sustainable hobbyist now! I grabbed a
couple and broke out the hot glue gun and the magic started happening. Here is what I have so far, still a little
top heavy so I put a handful of pennies in and then topped them off with some
hot glue. I'm going to give them a try
and see how it goes.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

As I prepared to get back into the hobby I wanted to have as much
flexibility as possible in how I get the painting accomplished. I started to recall my most productive
painting years and remembered a time when I had a small 2 foot by 2 foot
plastic table that I used to haul into the living/family room and paint on as
my wife and I watched TV or just visited.
This was for just basic painting, any heavy work or conversion stuff was
done on the proper hobby desk. Once my
sons were born the painting table wasn’t practical. In the ensuing 20+ years since that time the
table is long gone.

To be honest I
am a cheapskate and don’t want to lay out the amount of money that GWS wants
for their lap tables. Seems like a lot for so little. I do like the design but not for the price.

Then an epiphany
struck me, literally as a couple of pieces of heavy foam board fell over and
landed against my leg as I was mucking about in the hobby room. Why not try to make one out of this stuff;
with stuff being 1/2 inch foam board. It
is easy to work with and yet pretty durable, and even better didn’t cost me a
cent since it was discarded signage! So
off I went and behold the partially completed results. More to come!

Well I have come to
the hard realization that I don’t have as much time to paint as I had
originally anticipated nearly a year ago. That along with some plain old procrastination has lead
me to being 9 months off the paint schedule that I had originally intended to follow
and contributed to a poor effort in posting. I even
told myself as a New Year's resolution that I would post something at least
once a week, well you can see how that turned out! I think I have a handle on work so that
should be some relief and I have accomplished a few other items that will help
me get moving with a jump back into the hobby.
So fingers crossed you should see more activity here and not just my
babbling but some actual painting to boot!
Enjoy.

About Me

I'm a late 40's gamer that grew up in the golden age of miniatures and RPGs in the 80's. I cut my teeth on the likes of TSR's 2nd edition D&D and AD&D, SJG's pocket editions of OGRE and Car Wars and the glorious 3rd edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Rogue Trader from GWS. Long live the games and hair metal of the 80's!